Cirrus@Austlit

'In 1906, Kathleen O'Connor left conservative Perth, where her famous father's life had ended in tragedy. She had her sights set on a career in thrilling, bohemian Paris. More than a century later, novelist Amanda Curtin faces her own questions, of life and of art, as she embarks on a journey in Kate's footsteps.

'Part biography, part travel narrative, this is the story of an artist in a foreign land who, with limited resources and despite the impacts of war and loss, worked and exhibited in Paris for over forty years. Kate's distinctive figure paintings, portraits and still lifes, highly prized today, form an inseparable part of the telling.' (Publication summary)

'It has taken a lifetime for me to see that the more afraid people are of the darkness, the further into it they will flee.

'Nearing the end of her life, Meggie Tulloch takes up her pen to write a story for her granddaughter. It begins in the first years of the twentieth century, in a place where howling winds spin salt and sleet sucked up from icefloes.

'A place where lives are ruled by men, and men by the witchy sea. A place where the only thing lower than a girl in the order of things is a clever girl with accursed red hair. A place schooled in keeping secrets.

'Moving from the north-east of Scotland to the Shetland Isles to Fremantle, Australia, Elemental is a novel about the life you make from the life you are given.' (Publisher's blurb)

'In 1882 dismembered human remains were discovered at a lonely campsite called the Sinkings near Albany, Western Australia. The surgeon conducting the autopsy claimed they were those of a woman. Why, then, was the victim identified as Little Jock, a sandalwood-cutter and former convict? And why was the murder so brutal, so gruesome?

'More than a hundred years later, Willa Samson embarks on a search to find out. A recluse after having lost her daughter, Willa is drawn back into the world as she negotiates archives, communicates with family historians, and journeys to Scotland, Northern Ireland and England looking for clues to her questions.

'The Sinkings is a story within a story, the portrayal of a figure from the margins of history embedded within a contemporary narrative of a mother's guilt and grief.' (Publisher's blurb)